We routinely miss important information that is right in front of our eyes because our brains generate predictive models of the world that can overshadow what's out there

Normal blindness: when we Look But Fail To See. Jeremy M. Wolfe, Anna Kosovicheva, Benjamin Wolfe. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, July 21 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.06.006

Highlights

Looked But Failed to See (LBFTS) errors occur when observers fail to notice a clearly visible item, and occur across a wide range of tasks and settings, from driving and medical image perception to laboratory visual search tasks.

We outline a new, unified account of LBFTS errors, arguing that processes that serve us well under most circumstances are guaranteed to produce a steady stream of LBFTS errors under some circumstances.

LBFTS can be thought of as a form of ‘normal blindness’. It is obviously far less severe than clinical blindness but it is so universal that its costs are substantial at a societal level.

Abstract: Humans routinely miss important information that is ‘right in front of our eyes’, from overlooking typos in a paper to failing to see a cyclist in an intersection. Recent studies on these ‘Looked But Failed To See’ (LBFTS) errors point to a common mechanism underlying these failures, whether the missed item was an unexpected gorilla, the clearly defined target of a visual search, or that simple typo. We argue that normal blindness is the by-product of the limited-capacity prediction engine that is our visual system. The processes that evolved to allow us to move through the world with ease are virtually guaranteed to cause us to miss some significant stimuli, especially in important tasks like driving and medical image perception.

Keywords: inattentional blindnessvisual searchfunctional visual fieldattentioneye movements